


quantum entanglement

by alterpatty (Lvslie)



Series: the alternauts [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Cowboy Eddie, M/M, Parallel Universes, Time-Traveler Richie, a dimension-travelling richie in search of His eddie stumbles upon someone familiar, and violent delights au, both on twitter, but it can well be read as a sweet little science fiction story with a dash of magical realism, soulmates across universes? perhaps, written for the alternauts au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25074142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lvslie/pseuds/alterpatty
Summary: He’s dirty, and swarthy from the sun. There’s a puckered line of a scar, fresh and red-raw, cutting down the length of his narrow cheek under the scruff, stretched slightly by a crooked smile. His hair is unkempt, curling over his forehead, shiny with sweat beneath the wide rim of a tattered hat. There’s a kerchief tied round his neck, and a gun strapped to the holster under his vest. A toothpick in his mouth.Richie stares at him. Cowboy Eddie, he thinks, idiotically.[Or; a collision of two universes, cowboy Eddie meets time-traveller Richie.]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: the alternauts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816288
Comments: 10
Kudos: 150





	quantum entanglement

**Author's Note:**

> written as a crossover event between the [alternauts au](https://twitter.com/alternauts_au) and [violent delights au](https://twitter.com/delights_au)
> 
> | 📻 music for the [beginning](https://open.spotify.com/track/3AegxUxAwElyMb9b1AGeNg?si=Lrh6Bh3ZTlOYt2q5V6EmRQ): |

He wakes up, again—and again, it _hurts_.

* * *

The world is flooded with light, bright and unrelenting, the sun making the air tremble and twitch deceptively. Over the cracked earth walled-in with ruddy stone, sand sifts and meanders, propelled into streams of movement by a burning wind. It stifles the breath, pushing at his chest as he drags himself up on his elbows.

“This is _not_ my beautiful wife,” Richie croaks out miserably, voice a worn-out wheeze like that of a lifelong smoker, throat scratched dry, raw as sandpaper. He blinks, head heavy and swollen, eyes stunned by the glare of the sunlight. One of the lenses of his glasses is cracked and dusted with sand. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. Limbs heavy, he turns sideways, right hand reaching blindly for the device stranded aimlessly next to him. 

Squinting, he drags himself closer despite the earth burning his skin through the flimsy layers of clothing. He traces the designations panel with the tips of his shaking fingers, blinking at the sensor—the needle twitches erratically like a confused compass, a faint clattering rhythm growing stymied and dull as the mechanism powers down.

The date is wrong—wrong, _bewilderingly_ so.

Only one point off, a missed variable, and yet—and _yet_ , there he is. Richie Tozier, stranded in what looks like the barren plains of the Wild West, on the 16th of August, 2056. 

“Fuck,” Richie says again, with feeling. His elbow gives way—body weak from the strain of having dragged itself through the cracks of time—and he lets himself collapse back onto the scorching ground, eyes falling shut.

“This _has_ to stop happening,” he mutters.

The _thing_ about time loops—Richie thinks miserably—the _thing_ about this whole strange circular causality he’s found himself so entangled in, is that it’s difficult to estimate the point of fucking it up for real. He’s no idea if there is some sort of boundary beyond which he won’t make it to Derry Zero on time to save Eddie.

He’s no idea if he hasn’t passed it already.

He feels, more than anything, like he’s going forth by way of stumbling blind, saved from a consuming panic only by the fact he isn’t letting himself think—can’t let himself think—what _if_ —

_If I’m late_ , Richie thinks, feeling cold in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature. _If I’m late for him._

For a moment, he lets himself think of Eddie: the blurry crooks and sinews of his shape and muffled echo of his words, the vague phosphenes of him, burned into the inside of his lids like a stolen glance at something too bright to look at directly.

_In a bijective function, there are no unpaired elements._

The universe will not collapse because he takes the wrong step; it already has. No, this is worse: the universe may _go on_ , if he fails, go on with cold conviction without its central point, the equal and opposite factor in Richie Tozier’s law of motion.

_So don’t let me leave you again,_ Richie thinks, swallowing. He breathes in, shallowly, feeling his ribs strain in the sunlight. _Fucker. If I lose you, I’m lost too._

“Next time,” he whispers, bracingly to himself more than anything. “I won’t lose the way.”

Entirely heedless of any possibility of a _response_ , he flinches sharply at the voice that cuts through his thoughts like a whiplash.

“You happen to find yourself in this kinda _situations_ often—huh, friend?”

Not _just_ _any_ other voice.

A voice strikingly familiar, _achingly_ familiar, if tinged with a bewildering cantabile drag.

His eyes are startled open.

Haloed with the whitish glare of the tenacious sunlight, looming over Richie like a bad omen in a shabby dark travel cloak the wind picks at, there’s a man. 

_I’ve died_ , Richie thinks, deliriously, eyes blown open comically wide, mouth pursed as if mid-confused-utterance. Then, _no, I’m hallucinating._

“H-huh,” he manages.

It’s Eddie. By all evidence of memory and sight before his eyes, it’s _Eddie_.

But it’s Eddie as Richie has never fucking _seen_ him before.

He takes a step forward and then crouches before Richie, the soles of his boots dragging in the sand. It’s _him_ —it’s inevitable up close, with how well-learned the shape and expression of his face is—it’s him. But it isn’t.

He’s dirty, and _swarthy_ from the sun. There’s a puckered line of a scar, fresh and red-raw, cutting down the length of his narrow cheek under the scruff, stretched slightly by a crooked smile. His hair is unkempt, curling over his forehead, shiny with sweat beneath the wide rim of a tattered hat. There’s a kerchief tied round his neck, and a gun strapped to the holster under his vest. A toothpick in his mouth.

Richie stares at him. C _owboy Eddie_ , he thinks, idiotically.

“What’re you, a foreigner?” Eddie meanwhile asks, clearly amused, snapping Richie out of his trance. “Don’t understand what’s being said to you?”

He speaks—he speaks _different_. Maybe it’s the ridiculous little toothpick he keeps shifting in his mouth that’s making his words so muttering and indistinct—and Eddie’s never really been one to enunciate to begin with—but it’s not just that. If Richie didn’t know any better, and for all the shit he’s given _Richie_ for it, he’d say Eddie is putting on a Southern accent.

It sure fucking sounds like a Southern accent.

“No,” Richie says, at length, remembering how to speak in a feeble flash of clarity. He sounds terrifying, a harsh wheeze of a sound—like he’s dying of thirst.

_I’m afraid you’re quite dehydrated_ , Stanley has told him, back in the far future. Richie tries to swallow, but his throat is too dry.

Eddie seems to pick up on it too.

“You thirsty?” he asks, all casual, tsking around his toothpick, “I got something to drink.”

He shifts slightly, redistributing the weight on his thighs, and reaches for something strapped to his belt behind the holster. He passes it to Richie—a little metal flask encased in leather.

Raising himself up on one elbow again, he reaches for it with a shaky hand, fingers colliding clumsily with Eddie’s sun-browned ones. He’s got dirt under his fingernails; and something that looks like _blood_. Unable to tear his eyes away from his hand, Richie takes a swig from the flask and promptly chokes.

“ _Mother-_ fucker,” he spits out, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, eyes stinging. It’s _whisky_ , and it burns down his throat in a way it shouldn’t, not with years of practice drinking it, except he’s not really suspected there being anything other than water in the flask. He falls onto his back again, the impact of it striking him between the shoulder blades, stifling breath.

Eddie—the little fucker—is _laughing_ at him.

It pulls at the scar on his cheek, stretching it over the dimple, and Richie has a dim thought, _does it hurt you?_

But then Eddie speaks, and Richie loses the rest of his presence of mind.

“Too strong for you, huh, honey?” he asks cheekily, and Richie raises his head to stare at him incredulously, “ _Aw_ , I shoulda known a damsel in distress such as _yourself_ wouldn’t be able to handle—”

“Man, _fuck_ you,” Richie tells him, feeling his face split into a grin almost too wide for it, as involuntary as the sudden rush of warmth in his chest, in his whole body. “You’re such a dick.”

Eddie tilts his head to the side, eyes narrowing slightly; and suddenly the warmth inside Richie turns into something quite different.

_Bad omen_ , he’s thought.

And it must be, doesn’t it? Eddie, looking down at him like this with some manic light in his eyes—how not to see it as a warning? Conceive of a reality where Richie isn’t forced to associate this scant and precious sight with the world coming to an end. Reality where Richie hasn’t learned his lesson yet.

Yes, an omen. An angel of death.

And Eddie seems to pick up on that, too, as though by some eerie telepathy, because suddenly, something in his eyes changes. Dims. Into something tragic.

He takes the toothpick out of this mouth, pressing the knuckles of his right hand to the lips.

“Funny—” he begins, then trails off. His voice is muffled and distant, as if withdrawn into some other place, pulled by memory or recognition.

And then he does something that has Richie hold his breath on a sharp inhalation.

He reaches out—and touches Richie’s face with the calloused tips of his fingers.

“You seem,” Eddie says, quietly, “real _familiar_ , somehow.”

And this, here, isn’t it just the joke—the worst joke of Richie’s life. An inter-universal, ancient joke played on the _both_ of them: to be drawn to each other against all logic like two wild animals, circling each other in perpetuity, pulled apart every time each one draws too close.

Richie swallows, staring at Eddie, and unable to _speak_.

To do anything.

Eddie’s hand traces the side of his jaw, hesitant, exploring. There’s a frightful look on his face, both faraway and acutely _intense_ at once, like he’s trying desperately to understand something, to solve an equation the elements of which elude him, just so.

“Do I _know_ you?” Eddie asks, looking Richie in the eyes.

_Yes_ , Richie thinks instantly, the shape of Eddie’s hand burning a trace into his skin. _You do._

Slowly, he shakes his head.

After a moment, Eddie blinks, looking down. He withdraws his hand, the movement stiff and jerky.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding all of a sudden, strangely mechanical. “Don’t know—don’t know why I said that. Had this strange—feeling—”

He breaks off, stiffening even more. Suddenly he looks scared.

_No_ , Richie thinks, instantly, wanting to do something stupid. Like _reach_ for him.

Tell him everything.

“Like … like a _déjà vu_?” he says instead.

Bracing himself, he pushes himself off the ground and sits up, so he’s face-to-face, level with Eddie. He picks up, “Like you’ve _seen_ me somewhere before, even if it doesn’t make sense?”

Eddie blinks at him, as if thrown off balance.

“Yes,” he says, warily. “Kind of.”

And he suddenly sounds so much more like himself.

Richie smiles.

“Maybe you _have_ ,” he tells him, shrugging one shoulder. “Maybe we’ve met before. Or we will. Maybe it has to happen.”

Eddie’s eyebrows furrow together.

“You believe in that sort of thing?” he mutters, sceptical.

“I am,” Richie says, grinning wide now, “that sort of _thing_.”

Eddie watches him, in cautious and rapt attention, as Richie draws himself to his knees and reaches for the device abandoned in the sand behind him, flicks a switch that sends the first of little clockwork mechanisms ticking into life.

“A traveler,” he goes on, “from another world.”

There’s a pause.

“Tell me about it,” Eddie then says, abruptly, _very_ quietly. His eyes are glazed, reflected light diluting the dark of his irises. “Your … world.”

Richie shakes his head. “I can’t.”

It’s a strange thing: what light does to a human face. Making it so different in one moment from another. The sun is setting around them, now, brimming heavy with the colour of warmth. Nothing seems real, suddenly, like a strange and feverish dream.

_Different,_ Richie thinks, looking at Eddie who _isn’t_ his Eddie. Belonging to somewhere else, some _one_ else, in some other foreign time. Brought to interpose with him by some strange universal coincidence, for a jagged splinter of their respective timelines.

Different. But his eyes are the same.

_Quantum entanglement_ , Richie thinks, with a tug of the heart. The wind picks up, plucking at the strands of Eddie’s shabby clothes, pushing Richie’s hair into his eyes with grains of cutting sand. _A phenomenon where the state of each particle in a pair—_

With his left hand, he flicks another switch. The machine grows louder, a quiet staccato of increasing sound. He reaches out with his right one, and draws on the ground between them with one finger.

A line, tilting, till it completes the first circle, then breaks to begin another.

“Here,” Richie says in a low voice, tapping at the point intersection, “we are right now. You and me.”

_—cannot be described independently of the state of the other, and is directly and immediately correlated with it—_

He pushes one finger through the sand again, a pointed arrow.

“And here I’ll have to be going now,” Richie says.

_—regardless of separation in space._

Eddie doesn’t look down, eyes fixed at Richie's face.

“I’ll forget this?” he asks, hoarsely, nonsensically. It’s so quiet it’s barely a sound.

Richie looks up at him. He can feel the scent of ozone in the air between them now, midst the growing noise of the time machine.

“I don’t know,” he says, aiming for lighthearted. He winds up with a smile that _does_ hurt, somehow, even though he has no scar to show for it. “Would be pretty damned rude for a cowboy to forget his damsel in distress.”

Eddie laughs, a small breathless sound.

The last of the cylinders in the device clicks into motion, the lines and cracks on the surface glowing a bright blue. The wind grows stronger, warm and deafening now.

_Goodbye_ , Richie thinks, taking a shaky breath.

But before he speak or move, Eddie leans in across the blue-radiant space between them and kisses him on the mouth.

It’s brief—barely a touch of lips to lips before he’s leaning away—and it _burns_.

“Eddie,” Richie says, on _instinct_ , eyes pressed shut.

“For safe travels,” comes Eddie’s voice.

There’s a shift in the air, a _vibration_ —Richie tries to open his eyes but the world falls apart around him.

* * *

With a clatter of deafening sound and a push of cold air, a train rushes into the subway.

**Author's Note:**

> | 📻 music for the [end](https://open.spotify.com/track/0NSSZTpUoEtA8b0j1WtuvY?si=_p02H70NSUi5Qh5iRGMSsw): |
> 
> ♥️


End file.
